


The Bucket List

by thedenouement



Series: clexaweek2018 [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucket List, Clexa Week 2018, F/F, Fluff, Free day, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Soulmates, everyone knows when they're going to die, no gays were harmed in the making of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 17:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13862577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedenouement/pseuds/thedenouement
Summary: The "Everyone knows the age they will die at birth and when we meet at a college party we both have two years left so let's liquidate our savings and go on a around-the-world trip because I cannot sit here one more moment and pretend I'm okay," au, in which Clarke and Lexa take a Bucket List trip and miracles can happen.





	The Bucket List

**Author's Note:**

> No gays were harmed in the making of this. I repeat, no one dies.

Clarke grew up thinking she was fragile.

She was too young to comprehend the look on her mother’s face when she had found the number, skewed and grey on Clarke’s ribs while scooping sudsy water over her in the bath. But she knew it wasn’t good because that night when she needed the potty her mommy had been crying in her daddy’s arms. She knew it was the same thing that had her teachers looking at her with that sweet, sad look when they read over her forms at school, the thing that had everyone careful around her.

Everyone but except Finn in the eighth grade whose number was seventeen and who she would have thought had a death wish if she didn’t know he was just living his to the fullest.

It made her sad when he did these things, pulled these stunts like shimmying up the side of the gym or swimming out the deepest in the ocean on summer vacation. But it also made her like him. She was thirteen-years-old and love seemed like something for the adult Finn wouldn’t be, so she kissed him under the bleachers and held his hand when they went to the diner after school because he was nice and sweet, and he had something like a sad song in his eyes. He told Clarke he loved her in the summer between freshman and sophomore year, the day before he left to go to California and she cried.

They were a good couple, people told her in the months after.

Good because their numbers were both young, Clarke knew.

It was widely accepted that people with ill-fated destinies bonded the fastest; loved the hardest. Clarke hated the fact people pushed them together for the simple fact that it wouldn’t hurt for too long when one of them died.

When Jake passed two years later, it was peaceful for everyone but Clarke. She told the school guidance counsellor to shove her condolences up her ass and didn't go for her remaining sessions.

* * *

 She met Lexa in her second year of undergrad, majoring in art at the University of Maryland because Abby begged her not to go too far from home. She was the brunette with glasses on, standing in the corner of the pumping house party, engaged in a pragmatic discussion with her drunk foster sister.

 _'N_ _o, Anya, you’re drunk, you’re not driving me home.’ ‘Take the stick outta your ass Lex, my numbers not up yet,’_ she patted Lexa on the cheek lazily, _‘live a little.’_ The sister slinked off into the crowd and Clarke saw her crowded against the upstairs bathroom door with Raven later when she went to attend to a vomiting Octavia, but Lexa stayed rooted in her corner. She pulled out a dog-eared copy of Shakespeare's _‘Othello’_ and sat on a keg in a way that made Clarke laugh out loud.

“Can I help you?”

Clarke snapped her mouth shut, teeth vibrating with the base of the music. “No ma’am,” she teased, tongue through her teeth. She sidled up to the girl and leant against the wall. “You have good taste in literature. Bad taste in glasses, though.”

Lexa took her glasses of an examined them, affronted. “They help me see, they’re not a fashion statement…” she left the statement open ended, clearly angling for introductions and Clarke shook herself to attention.

“Clarke,” she hummed, “I’m Clarke.”

“Lexa,” Lexa replied. “You’re an English major?” She assumed.

“Art actually.”

“Ah,” Lexa nodded, “I see.”

“What do you see?”

Lexa smiled, “you have the look of a starving artist.”

“I’ll have you know I go back home every weekend. My mother feeds me up on home cooked meals, I’m far from starving.” But her smile, Clarke decided, despite the faux-degrading comment, was precious. It started slow, non-existent like a star during daylight when you knew it was there but lying unseen. Then, the left side of her lips quirked up and Clarke’s chest sung.

“But you _are_ an artist?”

“Yes,” Clarke confirmed. She drew with whatever paper she could find and her notebooks – and Octavia’s notebooks – were covered in doodles. Kids payed her in middle school to draw _‘tattoos’_ on their arms with permanent markers, and if her mother ever found out about the business she had on the side, she never said anything. 

“Will you let me see your work?”

“Only if you let me see your…what do you major in?”

Lexa laughed, airy, like she didn't use it that much. “Poli-Sci,” she informed Clarke, closing _‘Othello’_ into her lap with her thumb marking her page and waggling her eyebrows suggestively, “I can show you my notes on the American legal system?” When Clarke made an unimpressed face, Lexa nodded in faux-sympathy. “I don’t blame you, it’s severely flawed.”

In a flash of boldness Clarke plucked a blunt pencil from the spilt mug of pens on the nearby surface and printed her number in neat writing on the back cover of Lexa’s book, thinking humorously that the dusty tome could use some action. When Lexa complained that the book was not hers, but a class copy from her English course, Clarke assured her that she could rub it off when it was in her phone.

Raven came by shortly after, pulling at Clarke because apparently Octavia had been roped into doing shots with Luna and needed to be given water and put into bed lest she down anymore alcohol and when Clarke looked back Lexa was giving her a small one-handed wave, holding the back cover of _‘Othello’_ up in acknowledgement of the number, like a promise she would text. Which she did, three hours later when Clarke was in bed and sober, listening to Octavia stumble around the dorm room in search of water. She flipped the light on in the bathroom with little regard to Clarke and filled up a plastic water bottle at the bathroom faucet before returning to bed, uttering a sloppy, hushed _‘fuck’_ as she stubbed her toe. 

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Unknown_ ** _02/07/18 2:24 AM] Do I still get to see your artwork?_

 

Grinning into the fluorescent light of her phone turned low, Clarke saved the number under _‘Lexa’_ and replied.

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:26 AM] If you want to_

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:26 AM] You’d have to come over to my place of course_

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:27 AM] Your place?_

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:27 AM] My dorm_

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:27 AM] University housing? You_ are _a starving artist._

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:28 AM] Like you’re better Miss Residence-Hall-Across-From-Mine_

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:28 AM] You’re not above stalking I see._

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:28 AM] I looked you up, I like to be thorough_

 

 _[Text from:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:29 AM] And have I met your expectations?_

 

She hesitates before she answers. 

 

 _[Text to:_ **_Lexa_ ** _02/07/18 2:30 AM] To the letter_

* * *

Lexa came over a week later when Octavia had left for class waggling her eyebrows and telling her to use protection and Clarke stood behind the brunette as she surveyed the quick sketches and hyper-realistic images pinned to her side of the room.

“Well?”

She watched Lexa, the way she sifted through the layers of drawings held fast with the same drawing pin: rough outlines of hands around coffee cups; a road leading to nowhere; a running watercolour on crinkling paper of the aurora borealis. “You’re a wonderful artist Clarke.” She tugged the watercolour gently so it slipped from its drawing pin and the paper next to it fell to the bed. Lexa studied the sketch – herself, with soft hair and round glasses, dog-eared _‘Othello’_ in her lap. She grinned, smugly Clarke would say, laughter in her eyes. “What a likeness.”

Clarke snatched the sketch, hands covering her cheeks bashfully. “Shut up,” she scolded. “I like drawing you, okay,” she admitted, “you’re easy.”

“I’m easy?”

“You know what I mean.”

Lexa, Clarke found in the coming weeks, always knew what she meant. She saw things Clarke didn’t – even if she insisted the Clarke saw the world entirely in her own way, _‘artist eyes’_ she said tracing fingers over collar bone on the sofa – and she quietly commented on them. The way the woman sitting behind them in the cafe off campus looked like she had a bad day, or suggesting they scratch their plans of a night out in favour of watching _‘Stranger Things’_ because Clarke pulled an all-nighter the night before.

She was everything that Clarke was and everything she wanted to be; soft where Clarke was soft and pragmatic where the blonde was violently emotional and together they would do things.

She was so sure of it – of them and their perfect cliché – when she was shucking the brunette’s university printed tee up her ribs a month later, breaths hot against kiss-chapped lips, that when her fingers raked over the skewed grey _‘23’_ above the sharpest point of Lexa’s hip she wanted to cry. It was such a violent, sluggish feeling, like she was plummeting on a fairground ride but wading through glue. Revenant hands traced the mark, feeling it under the pads of her fingers like a sickening reassurance. “Lexa,” she whispered.

Lexa softened and curved, shoulders folding in semblance of defeat. She took the hem from Clarke and smoothed her tee down her body. “Clarke.”

They held each other's gaze, infinite conversations wrinkled into the atoms of their irises and Lexa reached out to bridge the space between them, stroking the pads of her fingers over Clarke’s collar bone like she did. “I wasn't sure,” she hummed and Clarke nodded. It was a tricky thing, your number; something so fragile yet the surest thing of your life and the blonde hated the way it was noted down on her documents like it was as unimportant as her city of birth. She swallowed Lexa’s words with a chaste kiss and took the brunette’s hand in hers, lacing paint stained fingers through Lexa’s to slip them under her shirt, dragging the hem up over her ribs. She pressed Lexa’s hand there, imploring her to understand and Lexa thumbed over the inch of skin with all of the sorrow in the world.

“Twenty-two,” she recited.

 _Twenty-two_ , Clarke remembered; two years left and half a life lived.

Octavia was out, Clarke’s laptop was propped on her art history textbook and tilted to forty-five degrees where they could see it from her bed, their mindless evening watch forgotten when Clarke had professed her interest in other things and the blonde tucked herself into her girlfriend feeling fragile and resolute. The AC thrummed, she played with the frayed collar of Lexa’s tee.

“It’s not fair.”

Lexa hummed and Clarke felt it reverberate in her chest and Clarke’s fingers itched with the need to press themselves there and feel it.

“I wish I didn’t know.”

“Isn’t it better to know, though?”

She looked up at Lexa, tracing the strong line of her jaw and her cheeks, her nose, her lips with her eyes.

“So that we can make our peace," the brunette continued.

“I don’t want to make my peace,” Clarke argued, she sat up, irritated and fussy, hot anger blooming like something toxic inside her. Lexa was the best kind of person, dutiful and kind, she religiously held the door for peers exiting their lectures and spotted the woman at the supermarket last week, who was short four dollars and calming her screaming two-year-old. She was realistic, pragmatic, she didn't take more than she needed and Clarke – what had Clarke done in her life that death had to be the equalizer? She thought of Finn, she thought of her father. In kindergarten, they taught her the meaning of fair. Sharing toys was fair, giving her peers turns on the swings was fair. Their numbers? They weren’t fair. “Fuck peace,” she decreed darkly, “fuck everything. I don’t want it.”

“Clarke –”

“Let’s leave.”  

“We can’t –”

“We _can_.”

They would. Abby had told her not to run from her problems when Finn left and she got angry, Jake died and she went hiding from the world, but _god_ it was tempting. Aloof and untethered, it was the only thing she was sure of.  

“Two years, Lexa, do you want to spend it here? I can’t do it. I can’t get a degree I’ll never use. I can’t stare at the same ceiling every night and _know_ ,” she made an inarticulate noise, gesticulating wildly and refusing Lexa and her attempts to beckon her back into her arms. “I can’t, Lexa, please.”

Lexa relented it and they called it _‘The Bucket List’_ – a sheet of paper pinned up on Clarke’s side of her dorm, permanent marker staining the wall beneath it from heavy handed additions. It took Clarke four days to get Lexa to reveal her personal must-do items but when she did she smiled, gingerly writing them down beneath Clarke’s _‘travel first class, ski in the alps, see the northern lights, bungee jump, visit Machu Picchu, go skinny dipping,’_ in her neat, law-student print.

Their fall semester came and went in half-conscious actions and pressing close in their dorm room twin beds, scrolling through travel blogs and Lonely Planet suggestions, draining their savings, informing the university they wouldn’t be returning after winter break and telling Abby about their plans, their two-year bucket-list trip, destination unknown that they arguably couldn’t afford. Whoever suggested telling her over Thanksgiving dinner thought it was a good idea was stupid. But Clarke was too hopped up on the anxiety of explaining why she had to do this to remember whether it was her or Lexa, especially since they were staying the night in Clarke’s twin bed before driving back to campus in the morning. She wouldn’t do it again, she vowed. But Abby smiled, hugging her daughter and she slipped a signed check into Lexa’s palm when they gathered on the porch the next morning, suitcases in the car, saying goodbye. It was enough to make Clarke burst into tears on the drive back to campus.

* * *

They went west in Lexa’s Jeep as per _‘take a road trip without a destination’_ after the brunette took Clarke’s _‘enter work in an exhibit’_ far too liberally, jimmying the front lock of an art gallery under the cover of darkness to hang the sketches that used to be pinned to the wall of Clarke’s dorm while the blonde sat in the car standing watch. It was the most rebellious thing she had done aside from punch Octavia’s big brother in the fourth grade because he was four years older and going through the stage where he thought he was god's gift to man and she was still laughing about it four days later in a crappy hotel off the highway in Albuquerque, tracing figure-eights into the taut skin of Lexa’s bare abdomen with the nail of her index finger.

“I can’t believe you did that.”  

“What?”

“Committed a felony.”

Lexa shrugged against the starch-white bed sheets, the curtains were stained and the mattress had curved in the middle like a sofa-bed but they had established the sheets were clean when they walked in even though the sink was clogged with strangers’ hair.

“It was on the list.”

“Is that going to be our thing from now on?” Clarke asked, hiding her smile in Lexa’s neck where things were soft and dull and smelt like something implacable, perfume and detergent. She feigned innocence and threw her hands up in a semblance of surrender, _“‘the list made me do it!’”_

“If you want it to be,” Lexa pressed lips to the crown of Clarke’s forehead and the blonde preened.

“I do.”

They made Joshua Tree National Park a day of straight driving later through limiting bathroom breaks and timing their stops at gas stations – Lexa filling the car while Clarke bought snacks with forty-five seconds to spare like something out of the John Green novel she read in high school. It wasn’t hot, but it was California and she helped Lexa strip down to her vintage tee, flinging her jacket into the backseat with her plaid shirt and their ill-packed suitcases, fed her girlfriend a sip of watery gas station milkshake and giggled through roadside landmarks. She felt light, like the wind. Lexa reprimanded her for spilling Cheeto dust in the foot well of the car and she stuck out her orange tinted tongue like the child she hadn’t felt like since Finn.

That in mind, they did Disneyland the next week. Clarke’s overt shock when Lexa wrote it on the list – which was thrice folded and stashed carefully in the glove box – was laughable but she was the perfect guide and when she slipped a pair of sequined encrusted black Minnie Mouse ears onto her head Lexa crowded her against the faux-brick facade of Disneyland City Hall and kissed her filthily.

“Have we found a new kink?” Clarke teased, fingering the collar of the vintage Mickey Mouse tee Clarke and swindled her into. It was tucked into the waist of her cut off jean shorts and if the five-year-old girl in a Cinderella dress wasn’t looking at them perplexed, she would have untucked it and raked her hands over Lexa’s stomach. Instead, she pressed her lips to the corner of Lexa’s quirked lips and pulled her in the direction of Space Mountain, paying a vendor for cotton candy and insisting throwing up was mandatory which Lexa frowned at.

Three days alternating parks and Clarke was suntanned – burnt – and giggly.

She revelled in the way Lexa’s eyes lit when Minnie Mouse kissed her on the cheek, rode the Teacups until she was dizzy, did the Tower of Terror nine times and laughed at the ride picture when they passed the exit. They watched the fireworks from main street on their last night, the only place they could find a spot after waiting through the evening for the Indiana Jones ride Clarke insisted was worth it.

It was, she maintained, but so were the fireworks. So was the way she stood clinched into Lexa’s chest, hands in the back pockets of her shorts, wearing her girlfriend’s plaid shirt so that the sleeves hung over her palms. So was the way Lexa was looking at her, like she was the happiest she had ever been and the happiest she ever would be.

* * *

Together they were a whirlwind.

California took them to Mexico on a first-class flight that they sipped sparkling wine through and made out in the larger than economy bathroom as per _‘travel first class’_ . They drunk cheap tequila and salt-rimmed margarita’s, and ate tacos from street carts. Lexa dip dyed her hair an outrageous pink. Temporarily, thank god, because it was a shoddy dye job that had her wearing a hat for a week before colour brushed out, but it earned another tick on the list which was becoming more and more travel battered with pen scribbles and stains. Clarke liked to look at it at night, morbid as it seemed. The paper -their plans - gave her stability, grounded her to a place where is stray kind of existence her and Lexa were living felt purposeful.

They were _doing_ things; she ziplined yesterday and it was exhilarating.

A week later, central Mexico took them down to Tulum, where the water was the clearest thing Clarke had seen yet and Lexa showed so much skin in her bikini of choice Clarke nearly jumped her on site. She didn’t, but she did pull it off later that night when they skinny dipped in the resort’s white sand beach and left that morning before housekeeping could charge them for their pilfered towel robes.

South America found them at Machu Picchu, legs dangling over centuries worn stone and watching the fingers of cloud recede from the peaks of the Andes, Clarke playing with the belt loops on Lexa’s pants.

She saw Lexa as something formidable. Wind back centuries and the girl would be a warrior, swathed in battle garb and wielding spears, streaked with war paint. She could see it as plain as she ruins but here, and when the brunette went to pull lunch out of their bags, crossed legged on the verdant grass, Clarke drew it in scratchy lines of lead.

Lexa blushed bashfully when she saw it but Clarke held the paper up next to her face, checking the likeness. She leant forward to press a kiss to her chin, her lips, her nose, her forehead.

“Am I a warrior now?” Lexa teased when she pulled back.

“The commander,” Clarke corrected. “You wouldn’t take orders.”

“I take them from you.”

“That’s different,” Clarke leaned into her. They were speaking in a low hum, something about the atmosphere up here that begged not to be touched, like if they remained here they would be immortalized in the mountains and strong stone. “I’m your girlfriend,” she ran a finger over Lexa’s hip over the material of her pants, “you’re contractually obliged.”

* * *

She told Lexa she loved her – wholly and irreversibly – in Kenya, where the greying clouds of a summer storm brew like a pressure headache above the savanna and the rain was hot. It drenched the gauzy white material of the linen dresses they had donned for the dinner of their luxury safari and while couples – finances and anniversary goers escaping children and life in the suburbs – fled to their tents around them with their swathes of mosquito nets and carved chess boards.

Clarke inhaled the smell of dust and rain and wound her hands in the frizzing locks of Lexa’s hair as the brunette kissed her until she couldn’t breathe, until _‘be kissed in the rain’_ in Africa turned to something else and Lexa's fingers skimmed the skewed number on her bare ribs like it was a birthmark of little importance.

* * *

Europe, Clarke decided, was a realm unto its own.

They acclimatised slowly, not straying from tiny towns inland in Germany, where Clarke took candid photos of Lexa smiling over bunches of wildflowers in cobblestoned provincial markets or village squares and they laid together in rented rooms in authentic Inn’s, eating local cuisine – strudel, Palatschinken and pretzels – as per Lexa’s _‘eat a dish from every culture’_.

They set their sights bigger eighteen days later, _‘go to the Musée d'Orsay’_ , _‘climb the Eiffel Tower’_.

The lock they fastened to the chain-link of the Pont de Arts was cheap, bought from around the corner, but Clarke traced their initials on with a steady artists hand and they scoured Rome and Prague and Milan in summer dresses and floppy hats in the days, sending thick stacks of postcards to Abby with tales of their adventures – of how Lexa left her passport in the safe in Italy and how Clarke couldn’t speak French to save herself despite four years of it through high school. And at night, Clarke would wait up on the hotel balconies, watching the outline of Lexa’s bare form in bed while Abby called, asking after Lexa – now her pseudo daughter – and reminding Clarke of how much she loved her.

They summered on the coast. On white sand beaches and illustrious lifestyles. No one knew them here. No one knew them in Mexico, or California, of Peru or Africa either, but this continent was the place they could life infinite lives through infinite lives and the anonymity made Clarke breathless. In Monaco, they were heiresses with hired couture and self-done makeup, escaping the suffocating grasp of their parents and high expectations for a summer of illicit fun. Lexa discovered an affinity for Blackjack in the casino tables and Clare _re_ discovered an affinity for Lexa.

In Santorini, they whispered to each other conspiratorially over the rims of expensive cocktails and lifting designer sunglasses onto their heads they watched the reactions of the other holiday goers, guessing whether the couple in the cabana thought they were wealthy divorcees, or celebrities escaping the paparazzi. Everywhere though, they were in love with each other and it was beautiful.

* * *

August was in Tuscany, in a sprawling villa with property and vineyards, statues flanking the gravel drive.

Lexa found a woman on the internet wanting house sitters for her month’s business trip to England and they crossed _‘rent house for the summer’_ off the list, spending the month with the windows flung open in gauzy dresses or nothing at all, exploring each other in the most desperate and careless sense of the word. They didn’t linger on the numbers when they were naked at night and Clarke wasn’t anxious anymore. She didn’t want to rage, she wanted to live, like this, with Lexa, nowhere and everywhere because when they were like this, Lexa looked at her like she was the world.

Six days in, Lexa learnt to cook from the groundskeeper with crinkled paper skin and Clarke would sit on the kitchen counter and take pictures at inappropriate times to sketch later.

She had a diary now, a leather bound, embossed one she bought in Rome that housed six months’ worth of sketches that she would tentatively show to Lexa when the girl was pink-cheeked and deep-breathing at night, when she would blush further at the drawings and tell Clarke she loved her.

* * *

Watching Lexa standing on the train tracks under the austere brick arch of Auschwitz-Birkenau in early November when the snow was light, was the most harrowing thing Clarke had experienced. She stood five paces back, tucking her hands into the thick coat she bought and swallowed, catching up to her girlfriend with brisk steps, distress winding itself into her spine.

What had those people thought?

Lexa’s voice echoed in her head from that night back in Maryland, _‘isn’t it better to know, though?’_ she had asked. Clarke shook her head.

It couldn’t be.

Peace couldn’t be made under duress.

She cried that night. She sobbed over the toilet in their hotel room until she made herself sick and when Lexa went to wipe the saliva from her chin she shoved her into the vanity and told her to go away and Lexa did.

It made her cry more.

She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and kicked the bathtub and wanted to know why the brunette was so okay with things but couldn’t find the answer.

She would never understand the peace Lexa made with death.

A half-hour later she emerged into the room, pyjama clad and remorseful and burrowing so deep into Lexa’s arms – somehow religiously open even after what Clarke had done – she no longer felt like they were two people. They were one now, four legs, two bodies, one heart, and for the first time, she began to wonder how it would happen.

* * *

Clarke told Lexa she was scared in a glass igloo in Finland. Warmth seemed a luxury in a country seemingly made of snow, but there were feather down comforters curled around their bare bodies and light danced in Lexa’s eyes – great swathes of magic, verdant green morphing into pale pink and regal purple. It danced like candlelight, as fragile as too, like she could pull it into her hands but it would dissipate like Lexa’s breath on the arch of her cheek.

“Lexa.”

“Yes?”

She lay so they were reflections of each other and wanted to kiss the freckle on Lexa’s top lip. But the anxiety was back, the distress from Poland that didn’t belong there to taint something so beautiful. She was crying now, salty tears ruining the sanctity of their night with her head in Lexa’s chest and the covers drawn up tight so they might strangle her. Humming, Lexa hushed her with pretty words and soft hands until her chest wasn’t heavy so violently and her frame didn’t tremble.

“It’s okay, Clarke,” she whispered. She repeated the words, breath hot in her ear, until finally it started to ring true.

* * *

She didn’t know when it happened. Somewhere between the white sands of Railay Beach, Thailand, and watching Lexa cradle a three-year-old orphan to her chest while the girl giggled and tugged on stray locks of her hair that frizzed under the heat of their week in Cambodia, she guessed. But early March brought with it skiing weather and Lexa coaxed her back to the alps, where snow held the Swiss mountains hostage and the altitude pinkened Clarke’s cheeks quicker than Lexa in a tailored snow-jacket did, and she woke up one morning dizzy and aching.

It was bound to happen. The country hopping, the climate changing meant getting sick was inevitable but the sun was softening the white glare of the snow and Lexa looked so gorgeous with bed hair and hands curling around the coffee mug the chalet provided that Clarke was petulant about it. She pouted and huffed, blocking Lexa out completely when the brunette put her on bed rest. _‘_

_You’re not a doctor, what do you know?’ ‘You’re not a doctor either, Clarke, now drink some water, you’ll get dehydrated.’_

Tongue out like a pre-schooler the blonde rolled over and took the comforter with her until Lexa let out a long-suffering groan and set her coffee on the side table, untucking Clarke from her cocoon to sift fingers up her torso dragging up her – Lexa’s – university tee to press kisses to the line at the waistband of her panties, up her stomach, her ribs, her chest, eyes placating.

“Don’t start something you won’t finish, Woods,” Clarke warned darkly, she coughed and it rattled in her chest. Lexa grimaced. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she cooed, fingers soothing her skin and Clarke melted into the sensation, eyes fluttering. Something about the domesticity of their easy routine warmed her, the knowledge that whatever bed she found herself in, she could stretch her hand out and find her girlfriends lithe form next to her. It was the only grounding she needed now, their list lay dormant, fold-creased in the front pocket of her suitcase, more checklist than lifeline.

Lexa’s fingers stopped and Clarke whined, “Lex…”

“Clarke,” her voice was tilted with a hard edge the blonde didn’t like. She pulled at her. “Clarke sit up.”

“Ow,” Clarke huffed, but she did so at Lexa’s behest. “Pushy.” The headboard was hard and her head spun like a top. “What?”

Lexa smudged a hand over her ribs, harder than Clarke would have liked, like she was smudging off pen doodles or permanent marker. “Eighty-six.” She whispered.

“What?”

“Your number.”

“Huh?”

“It’s changed.”

Clarke scoffed. “Numbers don’t change Lexa.” People changed. Seasons changed. Feelings changed. Numbers didn’t change.

Lexa pressed her lips into a thin line, grim in ways Clarke didn’t want to comprehend, like the grey of a gravestone or a processional march. “It’s _changed_ ,” she insisted, holding up the hem of Clarke’s shirt for the blonde to see and the sight knocked the air out of her chest like a semi to the wall of her chest.

“It,” she blinked hard, twisted her fingers in the hem of her shirt so tightly they turned white, “it can’t.” She looked to Lexa, eyes wide. “Is – you?” her fingers went to the waistband of Lexa’s pants but the brunette caught them and pushed them back before deft fingers could slip below, eyes sombre. “No,” she whispered.

If the human body had the capacity to implode that would be how Clarke described the searing, pulling agony on her chest.

* * *

The pink sands of Bahama beaches clinging to sun-kissed skin and Clarke wouldn’t release Lexa from her hands. Their sheets were cool, a starched white against the brown of Lexa’s skin, marred with white at the cut of her bikini line and dipping low over her backside. On better days Clarke would shimmy down her body and press kisses these, teasing and tripping, delving deliciously lower but today her hands were in the soft baby curls at the nape of the brunette’s neck and their lips were locked, an embrace that traversed lazy hours against cotton sheets while the sun stained the earth at its hottest time and children shrieked in their bare feet on the sand.

Clarke cradled the point of Lexa’s hip with reverent fingers, a thumb there always, brushing the skin like she could remove the mark but she couldn’t and her chest hurt with the knowledge – the knowledge she had lived with for the past eleven months, that their marks no longer matched and goodbye was real.

She felt utterly, disgustingly betrayed but she swallowed the curdled film on her tongue.

“It’s okay, Clarke,” Lexa hummed. The blonde had lost count how many times she had heard this from her girlfriend’s lips. The words felt acrid now, meaningless as cigarette smoke.

“You’re going to live,” Clarke stated, pulling back from tanned arms.

Lexa shook her head. “You don’t have to fight things Clarke, you need to let go.”

“Like hell I do,” Clarke sat up, mussed hair and kiss-swollen lips. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you die. You’re young,” she prodded at a bicep, “you’re fit,” at the taut stomach of Lexa’s abdomen, “you’re healthy. You have no reason to.”

“Reason means nothing.”

“Reason means _everything_. Fate is bullshit,” Clarke decided, “I make my own destiny, you have to make yours.”

* * *

Later, on white sand beaches and over Maryland Thanksgivings, Lexa would tease that it was the nagging.

Clarke, kissing the aching smugness that perpetuated the brunette’s lips, would insist it was superior motivational speaking skills, but both would agree it didn't matter.

Not when they had blood in their veins and air in their lungs and the astounding capacity to live.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr if you want to ([@thealmostending](https://thealmostending.tumblr.com/)) otherwise thanks for reading! comments and kudos appreciated!


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